Tag Archives: nutmeg

We hired a taxi driver for the day to show Erica and our fellow cruisers Penny and Ron from Arctic Vixen a few of the sights of Grenada. It is Penny’s birthday today so we wanted to make sure she had a good time.
The rainy season is just coming to an end so the country is lush and green. Our first stop was at the Constantine waterfall just off the side of the road. With all the rain, the roads are often in poor repair but the Chinese government had recently rebuilt the bridge near these falls making our stop easier.Then it was off to the Annandale waterfalls. We had visited these last year but we were the first group to arrive and the cliff divers were not yet set up. So we had a lovely walk through the gardens.We hoped to walk around the lake at the Grand Etang National Park. It is in a volcanic crater and we heard it would only take a half hour. Once we got there, the rains had made it too muddy and slippery to attempt. So we walked along the ridge above the lake. The views from there were lovely. Next was a visit to the nutmeg processing station. Before Hurricane Ivan 140 people worked at this station; we only saw 2 women sorting the nutmegs by hand.
Our final stop of the day was at La Sagesse Nature Centre for a walk along a beautiful beach.
We are now back in Prickly Bay in time to check out of Grenada and prepare for our sail to Union Island in the Grenadines.

On Thursday May 14th we left the Grenadines and headed for Hillsborough, Carriacou to check into Grenada. This was one of the few islands that required all crew to visit the immigration office. We are not sure if this was a result of the swine flu that seems to be making its way around the Caribbean.
We left the next day for St George’s and took a slip at the Port Louis Marina. We were surprised at how few boats were there considering how reasonable the rates were. We were joined on our dock by a $9 million Oyster 82 and a $6 million Oyster 62 (which is available to buy for anyone with a bit of spare cash…). Snowaway looks pretty small beside those sailboats.

We explored the island and enjoyed tours of three rum distilleries; Westerhall does not actually make its own rum anymore but imports rum from Trinidad, blends and bottles it, and sells it as Grenadian rum. The first distillery we visited was Clarkes Court, the second was Westerhall and the final was the River Antoine Rum Distillery. Clarkes Court produces one of our favourites, Old Grog, while we had trouble drinking the very strong River Antoine rum.

In the mountainous heart of Grenada is the Grand Etang Forest Reserve. There is a lake in the crater of an extinct volcano and unfortunately the day we stopped the views were foggy. However, there is a visitor centre where we were able to feed bananas to the local Mona Monkeys.

Grenada is known as the Spice Island and its most important spice is nutmeg. The fruit of the nutmeg tree is used to make jam, syrup and liqueurs. The red mace covers the nut that holds the nutmeg. Hurricane Ivan in 2004 destroyed over 90% of the nutmeg trees and they are just starting to come back. This has had a very negative effect on the economy with the loss of employment (particularly to the women).

We tried several of the local restaurants and our favorite was BB’s Crabback Caribbean Restaurant. Mike and Richard had the goat curry and claimed it was the best meal they had had in the Caribbean!!